Happy Opening Day, every one! We survived another long offseason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Washington Nationals threw away 2015 and Bryce Harper<\/strong>‘s magnificent season in late 2013 when they hired Matt Williams to succeed Davey Johnson as manager. Now, they hope hiring one of Williams’s mentors will reverse the trend. Dusty Baker<\/strong> has a reputation of poor pitching management, but also being a strong clubhouse manager. After last season, the former seems more important. The biggest issue for that Nats and every one of course is health. Last year the optimum lineup played TWICE in 162 games. Leadoff man Denard Span<\/strong> is gone with Ben Revere<\/strong>. If Anthony Rendon<\/strong> can stay healthy and play like he did in 2014, that should be a solid top of the lineup for Harper and Ryan Zimmerman<\/strong> I’d he can avoid chronic injury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I like the Nats to improve over next year overall just by the addition by subtraction of Matty. I’m saying 90-72. I don’t know if that’ll be enough to win the division, but they will be a factor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Play ball!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Washington Nationals begin the 2016 season<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24978,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,106],"tags":[215,343,605,1119,1222,1711],"class_list":["post-24974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-natsmlb-2016","category-washington-nationals","tag-atlanta-braves","tag-bryce-harper","tag-dusty-baker","tag-max-scherzer","tag-nats","tag-stephen-strasburg"],"yoast_head":"\n
Stephen Strasburg<\/strong> is in his walk year and seems to have put it together in the second half of 2015 – if he’s healthy he probably wins more than Opening Day starter Max Scherzer<\/strong> who seems likely to regress a bit in his second NL season. It’s an enviable top two, but looming in the East is a powerful, young New York Mets rotation with a pennant on the resumes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n